Tesla goes ahead with hiring event in China after Musk job announcement

SHANGHAI, June 9 (Reuters) – Tesla continued with an online hiring event in China on Thursday, adding two dozen new job postings for the country, a week after Elon Musk threatened to shut down the electric car maker and said the company was “overstaffed” in some areas .

Tesla (TSLA.O) plans to hold the event online from 1[ads1]9.00 Shanghai time (1100 GMT) and will recruit employees for roles for “smart production”, according to an online post.

Tesla has 224 current openings in China for executives and engineers under that category, according to a separate post on the WeChat account, 24 of which were recently posted on June 9th.

Among the positions posted are managers and engineers who will oversee the operation of their 6,000-ton die-casting machines known as Giga Press, one of the world’s largest.

Tesla regularly holds such hiring events online in China, with the most recent being held in May for summer interns.

Tesla’s China revenue more than doubled in 2021 from a year ago, contributing to a quarter of total revenue for the US automaker.

The Shanghai plant, which produces Model 3 and Model Ys for domestic sales and exports, produced more than half of the cars it made last year, and Tesla also plans to expand the plant. read more

However, production at the plant was hit hard by Shanghai’s two-month COVID-19 shutdown, which halted work for 22 days and later struggled to return to full production. Prior to this, Tesla had planned to increase production at the factory to 22,000 cars a week by mid-May.

Musk, the CEO, said in an email seen by Reuters last week that he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and had to cut 10% of employees at the electric car manufacturer. The email was titled “Pause all employment worldwide”. read more

In another email to employees on Friday, Musk said Tesla would reduce staff by 10%, as it has been “overstaffed in many areas”, but added that “the number of hours will increase”.

On Saturday, however, he withdrew from the emails, saying that the total number of employees would increase over the next 12 months and that the number of paid employees would change little. read more

Musk had not commented on specific staffing in China.

Musk last month compared American workers to those in China, saying that American workers tended to try to avoid going to work, while Chinese workers did not want to leave factories.

“They want to burn the 03.00 oil,” he said at a conference with Chinese workers.

Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Edited by Stephen Coates

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